The Media’s Influence on Suburban Voters

By Premiere NetworksNov 7, 2019

RUSH: Micah in Waukesha, Wisconsin, you're next as we head back to the phones. I'm glad you waited. Hi.

CALLER: Thank you, Rush. And hello. Sad we have to put up with that kind of stuff in politics nowadays, but my question and also comment was, why are we losing these elections, like Wisconsin, our great governor, Scott Walker lost to a bad candidate. And then in Kentucky, that governor lost, and then Virginia, we see both houses now Democratic.

And it's just sad to see this happening. But one ray of hope is that in Wisconsin five months after Governor Walker lost, we fought back and we elected a Supreme Court candidate in Wisconsin, and it was a narrow margin, but we fought hard, we put our noses to the grindstone and won.

RUSH: Well, Wisconsin is actually, on balance, a success story. Kentucky was a Republican sweep, Micah. Republicans won by double digits every statewide office except for the governorship. The media is trying to portray Kentucky as Trump's end because the candidate he endorsed for governor lost. But the Republicans swept that state big time. Trump's approval rating in Kentucky, 55% versus 41% who disapprove. Scott Walker in Wisconsin.

Don't forget, Scott Walker won three recalls. By the time Scott Walker lost, he'd been in office a long time. But he won repeatedly against some of the greatest odds anybody has ever run against. He beat these people back. It's one of the reasons he started the 2016 Republican primary field at the top because so many people thought that he was somebody who literally had faced the leftist firing squad and had beaten them three times, wasn't intimidated, knew how to do it.

But everybody in politics eventually wears out their welcome. Virginia is just a function of suburban spread from the deep state. The people that live and work in Washington have polluted the northern suburbs of Virginia, and that sprawl now is including suburbia in down south and areas of Richmond and so forth. But there is something going on. I'm not trying to deny your premise.

There is something going on, and it's unsettling, and we need to have an answer for it, or an answer to it. Your basic question is how in the hell is any of this radical liberalism winning anywhere in the United States? I know that's what your question is, and I share the concern that you have about it. It doesn't make sense.

How in the world can some of this radical, anti-American liberalism or radical leftism be winning when so much it seems to be rooted in hatred for America's founding? And it is a troubling reality. And a lot of people, "It's Trump, Rush. If Trump weren't there, these people wouldn't be running the other --" It's not Trump, folks. It isn't Trump.

The two most influential institutions that shape public opinion are education and the media. And it's not an accident that white college educated Millennials and people into their forties are shifting left. That's all they've been taught when they've gone away to school. Even in high school, that's what they were taught. They grew up watching cartoon shows about how evil American corporations are.

In the educated groupings of this country, in the highly educated group, you can't believe -- maybe you know it -- the peer pressure is incredible. The desire to be accepted into what they think is the establishment or the elites of their town, their city, the place they work, and I don't think you have to whole lot of leaders. I think you've got a lot of followers. And they look at what they think defines what's the majority. They look at what they think defines what -- I hate to use these words -- cool and hip, but they work for my point here.

I'm just telling you, a steady diet of mainstream media coupled with the way you're educated, and I guarantee you you're going to think that Republicans are white supremacists, Nazis, and Klansmen. This is what they've been taught. You can chalk it up to branding. You can chalk it up to education. But I'm telling you, a lot of the white, liberal, radical, educated suburban demographic today literally believe -- 'cause they watch the media. I mean, they see the lies presented after Charlottesville happened. They see the lies every time there's a mass shooting. They see the lies about Republicans. They just believe it.

Everybody believes what they read in the New York Times. They just do, the people that subscribe. They believe what they see on CNN. Folks, if we didn't have this program and other talk radio, Fox News, conservative websites, blogospheres, we'd have lost the country already. If they still had their monopoly, there wouldn't have been any pushback. And therein lies the answer.

Alternative media is one thing that has to continue to grow, and we have got to somehow either reassert our dominance in public and university education, or come up with alternatives, 'cause those are the two places that are the most powerful in creating public opinion. And I mean creating public opinion, not reflecting it. They create it.